NOTE: THIS USER GUIDE ONLY APPLIES TO THE V3 NODE
For the CTT Node V2 please consult the appropriate user guide in the CTT User Guide Directory
Congratulations on your purchase of the new CTT Node V3! The CTT Internet of Wildlife System, which the Node has been an integral part of since the beginning, has just gotten a whole lot more awesome with this new Node. We took your suggestions to heart in developing this new Node, which has a few very specific benefits and departures from the old model:
We have no doubt that you are excited to deploy your Nodes, so here’s a quick start guide to get you going in a few minutes.
The power cable runs first through the cap of the
cable gland, then the rubber grommet with the
lip of the grommet facing toward the Node (see
red arrow in the image below)
When you screw the cable gland cap onto the
cable gland, it will compress the grommet and
seal around the cable. Before tightening, make sure the power plug is
pulled through the cable gland and into the case, and plugged into the
5v barrel jack on the Node board. Ensure a little bit of
slack on the cable inside the case and then tighten down the cable gland
cap until there is no movement in the cable when tugged lightly. This
process both seals the entry from water, and helps reduce the chance of
unintentionally pulling on the powe cable and damaging the board.
We recommend the final tightening of the cap with a crescent wrench.
Once the cap is tightened, you should see the grommet compressed around the cable.
Your Node comes with the hardware necessary to mount it to a piece of 3/4” conduit. Note other mounting hardware is absolutley possible so feel free to use whatever makes sense for your site. In your shipment you have:
We recommend that all Nodes are placed within 1km of a SensorStation to ensure that all data is effectively transferred from the Nodes to the SensorStation. This assumes good line-of-sight between the Nodes and the SensorStation, so every installation must consider topography, vegetation, or height of Nodes and/or SensorStation antennas when estimating detection distance. Some trial and error should be expected when setting up your Node grid.
Nodes can be used for various reasons to answer a number of questions. This section assumes that Nodes are being used for localization, or estimating a location within a Node grid from multiple simultaneous Node detections. In this case it’s important to understand the relationship between distance and signal strength between your tags and your grid of nodes. This can be accomplished using one of your tags and a CTT Sidekick. We will go over this is a separate section, but assuming you have a good handle on at what distance signal strength becomes uninformative, with regards to distance, you will want to ensure that your node spacing is less than this distance. In several empirical cases we have found that distance to be ~150m, so spacing nodes every 100m or less is good for a number of bird species. For species that spend their life on the ground (turtles, etc.) this distance may be closer to 50m, but ultimately will require some test data collection.
This User Guide is a living document. Your experiences and input are
greatly appreciated so please don’t hesitate to reach out to us
regarding what you’d like to see included here. You can submit your
suggestions and any errors to our Customer Service Desk here
and we will work to incorporate them in future revisions. All material ©
Cellular Tracking Technologies, 2024.